Riding in your Head

I’m guilty of breaking my own rule. I recently rode home after a couple of beers risking both injury and bothering the police. However, it did make me think, as these things tend to. I marvelled at the way I could ride a bike, essentially balancing on two spinning wheels and controlling them over the roads to get home, even when slightly impaired. I realised that the ability to ride must be ingrained somewhere subconscious where it’s become as easy as walking and something you remember like, well, riding a bike. Too much thinking, and focussing on the brilliance of the wheels spinning under you, does lead to problems as it’s hard to concentrate on what you’re doing with too much introspection going on. I know this to my cost as I once ended my ride home in A&E after my daydream about chips distracted me so much that I fell hard enough to break my collar-bone, in one move picking up a real cycling injury, and a pathetic failure in my ability to ride in a straight line.

I also recently found myself thinking as I rode of all the things that can change a ride to work, both in terms of how fast you go, and more importantly, how the ride feels. This was in light of the start of the Great Four Miles Project to get Fit which inspired me to think about how fast I get over the ride. Do I go faster or slower when it rains? Does how much I drank the night before have a detrimental impact, or do I go faster, unable to feel the pain in my legs? Am I influenced much by the heat, or the humidity? Do the rides that feel flowing and smooth, where I don’t really want to arrive, go faster than the ones I fight all the way? Does what I eat in a day make a difference? Do I go faster if I’m angry or in a relaxed mood?

All of these things swirled around my head as I rode and I tried to come up with a way of testing any of them in an interesting way, bearing in mind I’m a little lazy and can’t really be bothered to time every run to work and back accurately. In the end my deliberations and thoughts continued until I arrived at the end of the ride and I realised that in some ways it’s the rides you cruise through thinking of something else that seem the easiest.

One thing I probably won’t be bothering to think about is whether my bike actually fits me, but for people who obsess about such things and have an iPhone there’s a fancy new app to try out. It does seem expensive at $4.99 and with so many measurements to put in surely it’d be more fun to actually go and ride the bike to see how it feels. Either that or I want it to do a lot more and tell me which bikes, from all the ones available, will make me faster, cooler and more comfortable. I guess there’s no substitute for a good bike shop even with Apple technology?

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